Climb
by gabby silang
Summary: From his father's car to someone else's father-- he's always broken things to see how they work, how he could work them better. SarkSarkSark.
1. 1 2

Author: gabby silang (gabby_silang@hotmail.com)  
  
Spoilers: None  
  
Summary: SarkSarkSark.  
  
Distribution: Just let me know.  
  
FeedbackFeedbackFeedback.  
  
Climb  
  
There is music in the background. Classical guitar, Spanish. It swells and falls with the crickets and frogs. Stars appear one by one at first, then in pairs, then droves until the sky is not dotted in white so much as striped with the deepest navy blue, running in rivulets around the massed points of light. He takes it all in, sipping at the onset of night like a good port.  
  
The appreciation of beauty is, by some, regarded to be contrary to the business. He'd always considered it essential, an invaluable occupation. Business runs smoother in good, crisp clothes, fully loaded cars, and with a side of cabernet sauvignon. It feels smoother, pours down the throat like silk, rolls off the tongue like a good, hearty laugh.  
  
Indulgences in luxuries do not make him extravagant. He is, at heart, a minimalist, loving the simplicity of his work. Never any reasons but one's own, no rules of engagement other than those he will set. As soon as the situation is clear, the path is obvious, the outcome nearly inevitable.  
  
Words like 'objective' and 'accomplished' trip to the tip of his tongue but he smiles and holds them in, savoring.  
  
This place is a secret even to his employer-- four walls and isolation that can be trusted more than shakily reciprocated trust. He had thought he'd die before owning land in the States. Then again, he doesn't really own it.  
  
The smile widens, almost uninhibited.  
  
He's young enough for foreign landscapes to remain a novelty. Now the mountains, the dark sea of trees, the blanket of starlight in a sky so very high above are a private amazement to the young lad from Lancashire.  
  
Another point to file away, to take out in the future day when he'd reach his own summit and look down on how he got there. Look down on the shoes he'd licked, the drinks he'd poisoned, the doors he'd kicked down just to get in. He'd look down, but more importantly, they'd look up. Look up and envy, say they'd known all along, say they'd get there some day too. But there isn't that much room on a precipice.  
  
For now he allows himself to grin, and leans back further against the worn wooden steps, somewhere halfway up a mountain.  
  
  
  
  
  
2.  
  
He'll allow himself to be messy tonight. He leaves the half-full bottle on a low coffee table, the glass unwashed, close enough to the edge of the counter to fall off from the careless brush of a sleeve. Of course he won't be that careless, but it's the principle of the thing. He'll allow the possibility of broken glass, red/purple stains on the wool carpet. He'll walk barefoot to invite the pine needles to stab him. He still won't light a fire-- it's not a death wish, he just wants to be thoughtless for a while.  
  
He'll sleep naked, where even the simple cotton sheet feels luxurious and silken sliding over skin. He's never been a still sleeper. Most nights he can't stand to sleep at all-too many things he still wants to do, wants to say. By dawn he will be frustrated at the world's laziness, how it can spare so many hours for rest when there are a thousand other places to be, goals to achieve, and all of them requiring wakefulness.  
  
Tonight he will rest. He will contemplate the stars through the window above the headboard, listen to the forest breathe like a singular beast alive and heaving with the effort of survival. The sheet will end up at his feet so that he can feel the breeze in every pore, inhale it fully. The gun under the pillow makes him feel less exposed. Vulnerability is never an issue, not here.  
  
In the middle of the night he'll rise and wander, like a caged thing, to every corner, searching for occupation, for meaning. Bypass the door and toy with the wine glass, sip at its liquor, not yet warm. Lean against the window frame and paint the trees and mountains out of the shadow that's engulfed them. He'll try to pick out individual sounds from the host of alien noises that seep through the glass, the slats in the walls, the open window he's turned his back to. Just watching, casual, until he realizes that he feels safe.  
  
It's too strange to analyze and he'll make a beeline for the bed, feel for the gun and grip it to remind himself not to sleep. 


	2. 3 4

3.  
  
Near two o'clock the stars snuff out, outdone by roiling, eager cumulous. The sky sends out a timpani beat, echoing and unsyncopated. There will be rain later; for now the heavens hold back, but crackle in anticipation, giving away the game.  
  
He abandons pretense, pulls on yesterday's pants, and returns to the porch steps to listen, to feel as the storm molds to the landscape, to his skin. He can hardly hear the night for the humming in the air. He shuts the door behind him, habitual.  
  
Fear is not a word that he will use. He is cautious. Paranoid, perhaps, but never overly so. In the end, people are surprisingly predictable. They will act either selfishly or selflessly, both are easy to spot, and all will lie and say they do neither. There is a purity in the human spirit that he respects. Abuse is his greatest form of flattery. From his father's car to someone else's father-he's always broken things to see how they work, how he could work them better.  
  
He won't relax until the clouds do. He'll dip and rise with their bellies, pregnant with tension, taut as an unplucked string. He's rubbing fingertips against mouth, tongue against teeth.  
  
Years ago he'd flirted with smoking, but while the image was charming enough, he abhorred the smell. The traces it left on his clothes were unpleasant, and the idea that such a trace of himself would be left behind, unintended, was intolerable. The stopping was the most pleasing part of the experience. The bizarre idea that one could crave the acrid spice of smoke down one's throat. He'd never wanted to hurt anything more than he wanted to burn himself then. Burn down and glow like embers, fall like ash, live that quickly and die that subtly. He quit and learned to be languid.  
  
There is no wind. The air is intimate as a woman, and the storm hanging on his bones like flesh.  
  
  
  
  
  
4.  
  
He'll go for a walk before the rain comes. The thickness of the air will force him to recall how to move-every limb creating a vacuum behind itself. Feeling lungs expand and contract with the effort of heavy steps. He'll breathe in soup and exhale in short bursts. He likes to pant, a sign of living.  
  
The road that approaches the property ends almost 100 yards from the front door. He'll go in that direction, giving him a tangible destination through everything he cannot see. He'll feel the trees more than see them as he passes each one, brushing shoulders with their blurry edges and smelling their distinctive cologne. No two pines will smell alike to him. This one richer, mature, that one sweet with the unique citrus tang of youth.  
  
Having not yet come to terms with his own youth, he tends to act as if more seasoned, and while he's earned the right to do so it still drives him to be unflinching, unhesitant. To pause is to admit uncertainty. Uncertainty makes him uncomfortable. The way he prefers clear, crisp nights that negate the darkness with their starlit clarity. He will walk more slowly during the dim preamble to the storm, ascertaining the nature and location of everything around him before putting his back to them.  
  
He will know when he's reached the road when the ground gives with a different quality, the gravel running from his feet and jumping into the places between toes to be discovered later when he's trying to get comfortable under mussed sheets. He'll feel an unaccustomed freedom of movement for the half-second just before the rain falls-the adjusting of air quality to the jagged river that will drop onto him all at once.  
  
He'll be drenched systematically; an inventory of himself taken through inundation. Hair, eyelashes, shoulders, the space between the wing bones that's become more defined since he looked up to survey the tree line and get his bearings. Hipbones jutting over the waistline of pants will make waves at the bottom of his stomach.  
  
A gully runs near the cabin creating a real possibility of flash-flooding, but, not done yet, he will stay out a bit longer. This is what he came here for. The rain will sweep out every pore, run circles around every strand of hair, chill every spot of flesh until he'll shiver violently from the top of his spine to his ankles, almost losing balance.  
  
Cold mountain rain will always make him think of death. When he's finished with it he will turn and walk back to the cabin, open the door and close it behind him. He will sit by the ash-littered fireplace and listen to the grate sound like steel drums until morning. He will not sing to himself or anyone else. 


	3. 5 6

5.  
  
Sleep defeats him and he dreams through a grey dawn. The ground is a map of farmland, pine groves, and irrigation. Roads branch like tributaries- drifting and interconnected, destination meaningless. He is an asteroid, his skin will burn off any second now, his hands clutch at the air's resistance, the wind is rejecting him, an unknown blood type is hurtling through his veins and it's about to make him burst out laughing. There is a river at his ears, talons on his stomach, fury beating at every molecule, and a dim recollection of a safer place abandoned for this beautiful fatality. He is skydiving. Through the clearest day there's every been, without plane or soul in sight, he is projecting himself, missile-like, through endless pillars of heated thermals, cold, wrenching plunges, and invisible somethings that pummel his skin. There is nothing on his back but a shirt and suit jacket, and he's never felt more secure.  
  
Visuals shift and he is in a sea of people who are breaking against skyscraper shores. They're all shoulders, feet, and elbows, shoving, moving him inexorably as the tide, pushing him away from an open car door and the hidden face inside. There is no sidewalk, no street, the concrete is constant, neutral, spiderwebbed like shattered glass. If he would trip he'd be trampled, forgotten, fit into a crevasse with chewing gum and cigarette butts, exiled. He looks at the sky to get his bearings, still possible even as window-mirror walls sway and tip with the jarring of the crowd. Something above him, watching him, falling, speeding, smiling at him, dropping, serene.  
  
He wakes to a sore neck and a temper-he lacks the patience for symbolism.  
  
  
  
  
  
6.  
  
He will not pay attention to the road, believing wholeheartedly that the driving will take care of itself. He will watch the sun. The daylight will spy on him during his drive down. It will sneak, stealthy, over pointed treetops all along the east face of the mountain, illuminating and somehow furtive. He'll turn on the radio for inspiration.  
  
Travel to exotic Thailand. Accommodations and meals included.  
  
He'll elaborate one way. He'd done informal recon in Bangkok the past three days, applying pressure here, there, until somewhere gave. Leaning until someone popped like champagne, information flowing though his fingertips in rivers sickly sweet with possibility, sticking to the hard palate like peanut butter where he just had to keep tonguing it, staying an extra night to get the whole story from the horse's mouth. Bangkok had been ugly, but smelled wonderful. The women were walking, talking birds of paradise. The food was Picasso on a plate.  
  
The Twins and the Brewers took a rain check last night.  
  
He'll elaborate another. A client in Minneapolis needed personal attention, something that could only be appraised on sight, as photography could not portray texture. A busy season, this time of year. He'd meant to return earlier, but the Midwest had had other ideas, blackening the sky and taking aim at the Twin Cities all weekend. If he ever had to watch that much American television programming again, he'd shoot himself.  
  
Ritually, he'll consider telling the truth. Ritually, he'll reject that idea, and turn onto Highway 151 towards the nearest airfield. 


	4. 7 8

7.

He loves to fly.  To transcend the human condition, be moving forward and faster than anyone on the ground could hope to approach.  He finds landing strange.  The sensations of a fall from grace, ripping the gut down and outward, clenching the fingers no matter how composed one may try to appear.  He's amused at how the most natural part of such an unnatural experience should feel the most unpleasant.  

He does appreciate the perks of the job.  The car that will always be waiting, the phone that will never be tapped.  Checking in consists of one call, commendations received and an errand dolled out.  It's on his way.  

The streets are narrow, winding, familiar in a way that no amount of time spent in a certain place while on assignment could accomplish.  This place has history for him that no foreign land could ever achieve.  A young boy, blond and lanky, shoelaces untied, runs by dribbling a football.  Smiling as he drives past, he exercises a different kind of stealth, letting the boy remember that he was here.     

He stops briefly at the city center, parking a block away, entering a used book store, asking for the Yeats collection, and climbing the stairs that bend beneath him, compliant.  Through the window and across the square, his errand is walking a jack russell terrier, pausing next to a tree, waiting for the animal to move on.  The window opens easily, he knows, and a copy of _Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha  is all the cover required.  The trigger bounces back to his finger, eager, but he only allows it one releasing.  It is a quiet day, after all._

He leaves with eyes on a _Complete Works of William Butler Yeats, mouthing words._

_The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere_

_The ceremony of innocence is drowned;_

_The best lack all conviction, while the worst_

_Are full of passionate intensity._

He is glad to be home.

8.

He will arrive after sunset to quiet rooms and drawn curtains.  Pulling the cord on a standing lamp he'll find the colors of clean white and fresh green walls, muted ivory armchairs, and russet woodwork.  The Yeats will be tossed onto a shelf littered with the same edition, kept company by Machiavelli, Voltaire, and Plato, all dog-eared, some crumbling.

The shoes will come off first, left at the bottom of stairs and beneath a photograph of crashing waves reaching for equally turbulent skies.  Suit jacket will go next, draped over the stair rail, and he'll turn to the living room. 

He will build a fire, will begin with the details.  Kindling from a box on the stone ledge of the fireplace will be arranged, the I-Ching for mindfulness and caution, stacked around a crumpled page of personal advertisements.  Three logs, two of medium size supporting the larger one above them, will go on top.  He won't need more than one match.  

He will sit back onto an old and coarse rug to watch the chain reaction—following, predicting, always learning.  He has never been afraid of fire.

Rising and moving to the tiled floors of the kitchen he will spot a figure seated by the window that looks out on the driveway, head slumped to their own shoulder, probably fallen asleep watching for his arrival.  Mildly curling dark hair will hang low over small shoulders, hands that speak of experience will sit idly on knees that barely brush the windowsill.  

He will walk to her heels-first, in total silence, all other objectives negated.  An arm around both shoulders will pull her firmly to his chest as she quickly blinks awake, registering her forced change of posture  He'll have her standing, tight up against him and the window.  Her neck will twist, crackling from its uncomfortable sleeping position to let her see his face.

"Christ, do that while I'm awake at least and give me a fighting chance!"

"Never. I know I couldn't take you."

"Damn straight,"  she will give him an appraising look as he loosens his arms, allowing her to turn around  "Why weren't you back yesterday?  I called the museum and they hadn't heard from you either."  

She won't say that she was worried, she never will.

"A long story involving the gross inefficiency of Americans and the multi-layered Hell that is their television programming."  

She'll smile, sardonic, accepting.  

"Just call me next time, alright?"  Switching to a pout and gripping his biceps,  "And please tell me next time won't be for a while.  I mean, I suppose the salary was a clue that they'd work you to the bone, but this is getting ridiculous."

He'll take his wife's hand and lead her to the fire he's built. 

"All for you, love.  You know I'm doing it all for you."   

Fin.

A/N:  This was my first Sark fic, and it's gotten me hooked on writing the genre, but what got me started was a lovely lady called Rach and her incredible works like "Sakura" and "Fourteen Days."  This wouldn't have happened at all without you, and I'm so glad it did.  All the thanks in the world, and this one's for you. 


End file.
